Arriving!

Our flight was long and most uncomfortable☹️. The excitement of flying to another country quickly disappeared as we went from flight to flight. 😰😰The long layovers did not help at all.😤 We boarded our final flight around midnight. There were paperwork issues that the pilot told us about which caused multiple delays. 2 a.m. Ready for take off. Yay!  🤗Announcements. Now lights out!  


I slowly drift off to sleep….Oh, boy.  Now what? Baby screaming. Nooooooooo! I’m exhausted.😢😢😢 Lights come back on and the attendant asks if we want a drink. No, I want to sleep. 😴😴😴😴. I pull out a book and try to read, but my eyes are too tired. I give up on that. This baby will not stop crying, and the mother seems to be indifferent to its screams. 😭 We are now 4 hours into our flight, and that baby has not stopped crying. The sound is ear-piercing. Now my headache kicks in. Ugh. Hour after hour the baby cries non-stop. Don’t they realize I have not been to sleep for over 24 hours now?  Phew. The crying finally stopped, and I laid back once more in this tiny seat. Turn left, right, and back to the left to find a position that will work.  Ahhhh. I find one, and off to sleep I go……..Nope. The crying  is back, and even louder than before. I give up on sleep. 

We arrive in Ramstein at 1400 local time. Now time to get off this plane of more than 100 people. This is going to take a while. We get our carry-ons and wait. My head is spinning. I soon realize that I’m no longer in the US. I start to feel very homesick. As the tears form in my eyes, we began to move off the plane. I hold back all my emotions and walk off the plane with more bags than I can carry. They pull us out of the very long line to check my husband in.  Yay, I think to myself. We won’t have to wait in that long line. Paperwork begins and the unthinkable happens. We are told to go back to the line, only now we are last because we got out of the line as instructed. 😡

Now to find our sponsor, get to the hotel and sleep. Not just yet.  We have to go through customs. Not too bad, since we did not have to wait very long.  I’m tired and now very hungry 😋.  What now? Our bags will not fit in the sponsor’s car😡. Another soldier comes over and helps. There. All done. Now off to the hotel. We get our room 🔑 and unload the car. Now the sponsor drives us to the commissary to get some food. You know the drill. Shopping while you are hungry is never good 😊. I buy junk, junk, and more junk. After all, I can’t get non-kosher food, so our selection is very limited. I’m too tired to look for kosher food or even go back to the room to cook. We find a bag of chips and soda. How awful is that?  

The sadness is back. My husband scarfs down the food, showers, and trots off to bed. He is sleeping like a 👶. The room is cold, and there is no heat. We arrived just as the Fall season began. This adds to my unhappiness, and all I want is to speak to family. The room offers free WiFi, so I log on and Glide my family and friends. I was hoping it would help, but it made me feel even worse. I finally fall off to 😴. Day one is done.  Check. ✅